ARLINGTON, Texas --- The Eagles’ continuing disservice to a professional football career moves Sunday night to the Dallas suburbs. From there, it will go to Tampa, back to Philadelphia, to North Jersey and into history. By then, there might be nothing left to save of Nick Foles.

In a season disturbed at so many points, that one has been the least discussed --- the one about how a rookie quarterback has been sent behind an offensive line of understudies and told to execute winning football plays. It is the one about a quarterback who had not been recruited for the purpose, at least not so soon. It is the odd view that because the Eagles would be without the concussed Michael Vick as the final hours of the failed reign of Andy Reid expired, that there was a value in learning more about the rookie from Arizona.

The issue did sneak through a side door the other day when an ESPN reporter wrote that Vick believed the Eagles were “playing politics” with his head injury in order to learn more about the NFL readiness of Foles. Within hours --- in one of his last, great blasts of arrogance --- Reid decided to speak for Vick and tell the press that the report was false. He never understood it, did he? He never understood that it was never his place to dismiss anything of which he did not approve. Maybe he can think about that in a few weeks, when NewsControl Compound custodians stash his stack of runner-up awards in cardboard boxes.

Even if Vick, through some well-crafted statement, would himself endeavor to blunt the controversy, its initial thrust was worthy of examination. That would be, what exactly do the Eagles expect to find out for the rest of a scared season from a quarterback who’d bounced into the audition only through a longstanding and false Reid belief. That would be that the system, Reid’s system, was so flawless that all moving parts were interchangeable.

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Through two-plus regular-season games, Reid has learned the opposite about his rookie quarterback. Since taking over for Vick during a loss to Dallas three weekends ago, Foles has thrown 99 passes. One (1) has been good for six points. In his two starts, Foles has thrown 67 passes, none for a touchdown, and has been intercepted twice.

Yet what were the Eagles expecting when they covered the 88th pick in the last draft with an Arena League line? Were they expecting him to play like their next franchise quarterback, and for their coach and personnel types to be carried around the Linc in triumph?

“I thought he did some good things,” Reid said, after a 30-22 loss to Carolina, adding, “I thought he made some nice decisions. He was decisive. He handled the offense well, the whole process in the huddle and at the line of scrimmage.”

It was the getting past the line of scrimmage part that was the problem. So now, on the basis of a decent preseason, Foles’ rushed NFL test will continue against the Cowboys, who are still thinking playoffs and are double-figure favorites. Neither LeSean McCoy nor DeSean Jackson will play. Y.A. Tittle would have struggled under such conditions. Yet the Eagles are using them to determine whether Foles can be a valuable quarterback.

“I’m always myself,” Foles said last week. “I stay true to who I am. My goal when I go to work is to be the best teammate and the best player possible, and to work at my craft --- to work every day to get better. If you do that, whatever happens, happens. That’s how it goes. I don’t really worry about things I can’t control. All I can control is getting better.”

He should have had time to do that, a year, two years, three maybe. He should have been buffered not just by Vick but by Trent Edwards. If he’d been a first-round pick and were paid that way, there would have been a different set of rookie-season expectations. But he was not … and he is showing why he was not.

Even those without concussions would wonder about that approach to football politics.